In last Tuesday's Star, you might have read the preview of the big-budget, mainstream films hitting theaters between now and the end of the year. This week we take a look at the indie films, which, though made for less money, are no smaller in depth of story or richness of characters.

It's an eclectic group, the smaller films dribbling out through the holidays and into the new year. They boast major stars (Matt Damon) and a lot of people you may not have heard of (Matthias Schoenaerts).

The plotlines are all over the place, involving everyone from a drag queen to the president of the United States. Some films will fail, but there may be a few whose titles pop up in an envelope opened on Oscar night.

Opening dates are subject to change.

"Hitchcock" (Nov. 30)Alfred Hitchcock is having a moment. It started with the HBO movie "The Girl," about the making of "The Birds" and, especially, the famed director's obsession with Tippi Hedren. Now a new film, "Hitchcock," looks at the making of "Psycho," offering a multidimensional portrait of the controversial filmmaker as a man and a husband. His more-than-30-year marriage to Alma Reville, his steadfast editor and sounding board, is the film's leitmotif, interjected between "Psycho" scenes. With Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren playing the couple, you can imagine their relationship is laid bare with all its wonders and faults. Scarlett Johansson portrays Janet Leigh as the smart cookie she apparently was. Showing what went into filming the famous shower scene explains why Leigh never took a shower again.

"Starlet" (Nov. 30) Besides "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway left behind several actress descendants. Papa would have been proud of the latest, his great-granddaughter Dree Hemingway, who has been collecting rave reviews in her first starring role in a movie appropriately called "Starlet." She plays a struggling actress named Jane who befriends her 85-year-old neighbor, Sadie (Besedka Johnson). At Sadie's yard sale, Jane picks up a relic that she later discovers has thousands of dollars rolled up inside it. Her problem: whether to return the cash. Johnson is making her screen debut after being discovered at a YMCA in south Hollywood.

"Hyde Park on Hudson"(Dec. 14) If you were asked to pick a contemporary actor to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Bill Murray might not immediately come to mind. Yet he has a largeness of personality and omnipresent twinkle wink in his eye that suggest FDR, and outfitted with liver spots on his forehead, a scruffy haircut and a cigarette holder grasped at a jaunty angle - the same upward direction his head is tipped- he makes a surprisingly credible President Roosevelt. Certainly Murray conveys the 32nd president's boundless charm, a quality that helps propel him through the intricate weekend depicted in this movie. Gathered together at his Hyde Park mansion are the king and queen of England - the king on a secret mission to enlist America's support in the impending war - Roosevelt's mother, his wife and his mistress. Flashing that infectious smile, perfectly captured by Murray, FDR is able to please them all.

"Any Day Now" (Dec. 14)Alan Cumming is one of those larger-than-life theater actors, like Ethel Merman and Nathan Lane, that Hollywood hasn't known what to do with. No matter what movie they're cast in, they always seem to be playing to the third row. But Cumming is finding his way onscreen, first as a brassy campaign manager in "The Good Wife" and now as Rudy, a drag queen in 1970s Los Angeles whose maternal instincts are piqued in "Any Day Now." Rudy winds up as caretaker for a boy with Down syndrome after his druggie mother takes a powder. At the same time, Rudy starts a romance with a closeted district attorney, and in a "La Cage aux Folles"-like scenario, the two pretend to be cousins to get custody of the boy. Based on a true story.

"Rust and Bone" (Dec. 21)Jacques Audiard is one of the best, if not the best, directors working in France today, a reputation that will only grow with his latest film, which follows gems "A Prophet," "Read My Lips" and "The Beat That My Heart Skipped." Matthias Schoenaerts, the star of "Rust and Bone," said the film has been "highly anticipated" in France because Audiard is directing Oscar winner Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose"), "so of course everyone is interested in seeing what the combination of the two of them will bring." Modesty apparently prevents Schoenaerts from adding himself to the mix, but he certainly impresses as a nightclub bouncer and deadbeat dad. He meets Cotillard as a tamer of whales right before a terrible accident that robs her of two of her limbs.

"Deadfall" (Dec. 21) Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitsky, an Oscar winner in 2007 for "The Counterfeiters," returns with this small-scale noir-ish thriller whose best-known star is Eric Bana. He and Olivia Wilde play siblings on the run from a botched casino heist. Support is provided by Sissy Spacek, Kris Kristofferson and Treat Williams.

"Promised Land" (Jan. 4) Besides starring in "Promised Land," Matt Damon also wrote the screenplay (with John Krasinski), one of only a few scripts he's had produced since the Oscar-winning "Good Will Hunting." Adding to the pedigree of "Land," it was directed by "Hunting" director Gus Van Sant, based on a story by Dave Eggers that sounds very much of the moment. Damon plays a corporate salesman for a natural gas company who is dispatched with his partner (Frances McDormand) to a rural community where his corporation wants to expand by obtaining drilling rights to the town. What the corporation thought would be a done deal turns out to be anything but as locals vocally object.

"Quartet" (Jan. 11) "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" proved that given material they could relate to, older people will go to the movies. "Quartet" is after that same audience, and though less inherently appealing than the earlier film, it does have a lot to offer. First of all there's the cast led by Maggie Smith enjoying a late-in-the-game burst of fame because of "Downton Abbey." Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins and Tom Courtenay join her in this story of seniors living together in a splendid home for retired opera singers, and how their love affairs dating back decades come back to haunt them. (Such a home really exists in Italy.) Dustin Hoffman has done a delicate job of directing in his first time behind the camera.

"Amour" (Jan. 18) "Amour" may be a tough sell in America, where movies showing people being brutally murdered are popular, but dying slow deaths - not so much. Winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival will hopefully turn some heads, because "Amour" must be seen. It has more humanity than any other film this year. Jean-Louis Trintignant (the lover from "A Man and a Woman") is heartbreaking as a devoted husband caring for his ailing wife (Emmanuelle Riva). The famed Austrian director Michael Haneke said he always saw Trintignant in the role. "It would have been inconceivable for me to make the film with anybody else."